“Tell us again about ‘Wild Roar,’ Hatchy Lady! We wanna hear how you sunk his ship and found his loot!” Strufee Mizzle howled loudly, tugging on Mol’s ears. Strufee was not alone. Five other small Rabbits and Packrats climbed on Mol’s lap or crowded around the barrel where she sat in her blacksmith shop. “Yeah! Missy Hatchy, tell us about Wild Roar and how you tied up his whole horde with a rattlesnake!” Strufee’s little sister, Yubbs, hollered. Friday nights, Mol was glad to oblige her small visitors, although she’d never touched a rattlesnake in her life! Her real exploits seemed to inspire the little “butter biscuits’” imaginations!
“Wild Roar the Tusk?” Mol asked in a whispered tone, cloaked in dramatic, but feigned, fear. “Do you mean the worst Boar bandit ever to terrorize peaceable creatures like yourselves? The fellow with two huge tusks capped with solid gold? The meanest scalawag to ever eat chopped up ears for his breakfast? The vilest, most dangerous desperado I ever tracked down? You mean that Wild Roar?” Mol asked innocently.
“YES!” roared the Young’ins, looking at Mol with adoring, wide-eyed awe.
“Well, I don’t know,” Mol began slowly, giving each of the Young’ins a solemn look. “Do your parents know you’re here? Do they know that I might tell you about how Wild Roar carried a blood-red sickle curved like a moon, that he used as a toothpick. AFTER HE CHOPPED UP EARS WITH IT!” Grabbing Strufee by the ear she asked in her mild, innocent voice again, “Do your parents know that?”
“YES!” the little ones chorused gleefully. “Our Mamas say, ‘Go see Miss Hatchy, she’ll tell you what happens to Young’ins that don’t obey their Mamas!’”
Mol raised her eyebrows, and peered closely at the Young’ins. “So, do you little butter biscuits know what does happen to Young’ins that disobey their Mamas?” Mol moved her gaze slowly from face to face, then she said, “Well, I’ll tell you what happens to ’em—They become terrible villains and desperados and then Hatchet Mol has to hunt them down. And when I hunt them down, why, I chase ’em day and night, day and night, until I catches ’em. I don’t let bandits stop to eat, or drink, or sleep, and there’s nowhere for ’em to hide. I’m so close behind ’em; they see me in every shadow. And when I catch ’em, I make sure they end up hanging by their ears in a deep, dark dungeon. When I’m done with ’em, they say, ‘I should have listened to my Mama, I should have listened to my Mama,’ for the rest of their lives.”
“So, my dear little butter biscuits,” Mol continued, “I’ll tell you about one of the most famous, and dangerous, adventures I ever had...if you promise to be sure an obey your Mamas! Hatchet Mol doesn’t ever want to have to come track you down because you turned into some dastardly character like Wild Roar or Broken Eye.”
With the Young’ins clustered around her and listening anxiously to every word, Mol continued: “Now, Broken Eye is one of the nastiest, most cunning Cougar bandits that ever was. Once he was terrorizing and pillaging some WooSheep villages and they asked Mol to help bring him to justice. After a long chase, I cornered him and his sidekick, Slasher Annie. There was a ferocious fight...my hatchet against his machetes...We fought steel-to-steel for two solid days without rest, we fought across 30 square miles of country, battling up hill and down hill, through streams, through woods...Finally, my hatchet shattered the last of his three machetes, and I had him. I turned him over to the sheriff and he went to prison, but I hear he’s loose and maybe up to his old tricks again...”
Hatchet Mol was Dry Gulch’s most celebrated resident. A world-famous tracker and mountain beast, the aging Jackrabbit was still a household name. Long a popular hero, stories of her exploits were legion. Mol had grown up in Dry Gulch during its boomtown days, helping her father in his blacksmith shop. Many mountain beasts, explorers, and adventurers of all sorts came through Dry Gulch in those days. Mol liked to hang around these daring beasts and listen to their stories. One of her favorite mountain beasts was a Grizzly Bear known as Wind Tracker Bart because it was rumored he could ‘track the wind.’ Bart taught Mol to throw knives and hatchets with deadly accuracy. By the time she was ten, she could slice cactus needles in half with a hatchet at fifty paces. Soon, the excitement and adventure of the mountain beasts and explorers captured her imagination, and Mol left Dry Gulch to follow their ways.
After a life full of danger and adventure, and tired of celebrity, Mol returned to Dry Gulch to live out her life. Taking over her father’s small blacksmith shop, she sought to slip away into obscurity. She was happy making repairs to the broken tools and weapons that were brought to her smithy. On the side, she made exquisite custom hatchets—pearl handles, exotic wooden inlays, beautiful etching on the blades, specially designed blades...They were works of art. She had a fine collection of such hatchets mounted on the wall where they gleamed in the light of her forge. On Friday nights, Mol would sit on a barrel in front of her collection, surrounded by Young’ins, reliving her exploits, but grateful those days were finally in the past.